Craving
by BlueSpiritFire1
Summary: Her memories are a mire of poisonous despair. Her brother won't stop, and neither will her tears. Until the fiery young cub returns to the scene of the crime. Hinted OichixYukimura. Set in Ep 4 of the second season, the time between consciousness.


**Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership to Sengoku Basara: Samurai Kings or any of its characters.**

Been a fan of SB for a while, but I'll be damned if I could actually write something for it. Got the itch to write, and I kinda slithered to this pairing. It's been a lowkey favourite of mine. I love Oichi, but for the longest time it felt wrong to put her 'with' anyone because she loved Nagamasa so much, and he loved her too.

 **NOTE:** I've not played any of the games, nor watched End of Judgement so this follows the two seasons of the (English dubbed) Samurai Kings anime. Gosh I love the animation in those seasons, and the movie. And there's a superb cast for the voices. I know I miss out on Masamune's vaunted 'Engrish', but really it's a small trade.

I **highly recommend** listening to the listed song. I think I incidentally found their theme with that one.

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 **Name:** Craving  
 **Pairing: _Hinted_** Yukimura x Oichi  
 **Song:** Krister Linder – Dare

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Oichi could hardly bring herself to look up. Her body felt so heavy and tired; her state of limbo now broken. When the Devil King's sister finally gathered enough strength to cast her eyes across the wood, she saw a face that she had only seen once before, in a distant memory of gunpowder, ruin and death, with details hazed over by fog of pain. Blazing red and a presence that hurt to behold - the Tiger of Kai's young cub. Why was he there? Why was his face creased into such discomfort? Darkness swirled at her side, a long, slender arm of darkness wavering unsteadily. She did not react. Not until it petted her on her head. Doe-like eyes widened as the haze upon her memories trickled away.

 _"Now the_ **_doll_ **_questions **me**."_

Her brother. Her tears.

 _"You stupid woman!"_

His gun. Her blood.

Oichi hid her head in her hands as flashes of a blue dragon and a red cub flitted past her. She whimpered, when the fleeting sensation of blazing warmth held her up before draining away all too quickly.

She died. She knew it. The Devil King's little sister knew that she had passed on, at that point. She remembered hearing two voices; one her beloved Lord husband, Nagamasa, murmuring sweet words of encouragement. The other, furious shouting and sneering from her pitied and poor Devil brother, Nobunaga.

At some point - she didn't know when - a third voice had lulled into her ears, like a rambling river.

"Oh _my_. To think, there is truth to the rumours. I wonder, little Oichi, if you can hear me?"

For so long, that third villainous voice monologued in her ear, with speeches of philosophy and treasure _and skulls_. Her brother now hurled his ire upon the voice, hissing at it. It had posed questions; all that unavoidably became rhetoric as she simply wept and whimpered in her ghostly state.

But Oichi knew as she recalled the sparse fragments of her memory that she was getting close to how she came to be now. She knew when the fleeting flame she had felt wrapped around her, seemingly eons ago, re-emerged in her memory. It was the same radiance she felt upon her at that very moment.

The return of the cub, with his righteous soul ablaze.

He bantered and argued with the river, and her brother's insults grew into bellows, raging against theft, fuming at Oichi for doing _nothing_ as the villain loftily held his skull, _daring_ to threaten to drink sake from it, enraged and insulted that he had his very own murderer _fighting his case_.

Oichi gasped and clutched her head tightly as her recount was swallowed by the ungodly wrath of her Devil brother and drowned by the unresolved sorrows in her own soul. Tears trickled down her face. _She had almost snuffed out the blazing cub._ Thank the gods his light had been stronger than her darkness. Oichi peered through the cracks in her fingers at the unconscious spear fighter. After so long as one with the dark it hurt her to look at him.

Yet, she desired, more than anything in her revived state, to bask in the glow of his soul and feel the comforting heat _just one last time_. She deserved no more.

Oichi dragged herself across the floor, unprotected knees scraping. She stopped at the young man's side, leaning over him with a soft sadness on her face. In her rare lucidity, she found herself staring at him, passively absorbing the light she craved. Faint tears still made their way down her cheeks, but a melancholy smile bloomed on her lips. The first since her beloved husband's passing. Oichi hesitated before brushing her palm down over the top of his hair. "You were there - both of you. You held me and mourned me. You fought with my memory. _Thank you._ I do not deserve such compassion. I didn't do anything...I couldn't save him...my husband..." her voice trailed off as a pained whisper. "I couldn't stop my brother. I couldn't do anything except _die_." her eyelids pressed shut. "I couldn't even do that right!" Oichi pulled her arm to her chest and hung her head in shame, muffling sobs.

The sorrow in her bones seeped out, poisoning the ripple of calm Yukimura's clarifying light had seared through the darkness. Oichi wept again, and dark hands slithered out from her shadow, waving low to the floor and in uncertainty. This time, they gathered Oichi up in their weakened embrace and pulled her back to the other end of the room. Enfeebled arms of darkness crawled across the floor, each shadowy digit scritching tiredly at the decaying floorboards as they moved Oichi away from the bright spirited man and deposited her far from his innate brilliance.

Oichi cried until her renewed body could no longer take the exhaustion and she fell over, sinking back into the mire of unconsciousness, guilt and despair.

* * *

When Sanada Yukimura awoke, dappled rays on sunlight filtering down onto his form, he woke in a dream-like haze. Lady Oichi was the first thought on his mind, and when he looked around for her in the ruins, his chest twisted into an uncomfortable knot. She was sprawled, face-down and hair fountaining down her back and onto the floor. What would happen to her now? She was no mere ghost, as Matsunaga had said the night before. She was real flesh and bone. She couldn't stay in the ruins of her brother's castle.

For a mad split second, he thought about taking her with him to Satsuna. She would do well in the sunlight.

The clatter of armoured footsteps banished the thought. Three soldiers clawed through the wreckage, their elation plain upon setting eyes on Lady Oichi. She stirred at their presence, slowly and stiffly. She looked right ahead at him, but her dulled eyes looked through him.

He recognised and was recognised in return, and the three Oda soldiers stood poised to fight. Until the thunder of hooves outside heralded the arrival of Yukimura's own allies.

The three survivors backed off, swearing vengeance. Yukimura wanted to tell them to pay attention to Lady Oichi, to care for her and worry about vengeance far later in the future. But the Vassal of Kai found himself unable to look away from the sad Lady Oichi. She gripped the forearm of one soldier to support herself, and he could only think of the far deadlier grip her arms of shadow had over him the previous night.

 _"You held me and mourned me."_

Wait. When did she say that?

Words rang out like echoes bouncing off cave walls, words he was absolutely sure he had never heard her say, yet knew he had indeed heard them. Her bleak gaze tiredly drifted to his, and for the briefest moment, Yukimura swore that she didn't want to leave.

But Lady Oichi did leave, without a word or a glance, and Yukimura found himself somehow craving.

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 **Cheesy title, amirite? ;D**

 **Thank you for reading! I haven't posted anything in a while (mainly because the scraps I do write contribute to larger stories that aren't anywhere close to being done) and it would be very nice to get some feedback!**


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